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Alex Kenny |
Alex Kenny, a Canadian, had a single round of Magic left to play in the Swiss of the StarCityGames.com Legacy Open in Seattle. His deck, a Prison style white deck, had served him well, posting only a single loss on the afternoon and he had even managed to knock StarCityGames.com columnist Max McCall out of the tournament. So who was he playing for the final round? Only StarCityGames.com Standard Open champion and finalist Luis Scott-Vargas, arguably the best American Magic player currently active. Luis was just a single day removed from finishing 2nd at the StarCityGames.com Standard Open in Seattle, and whoever won, it was certainly going to be a battle.
The two got underway with Luis on the play, and he had a powerful start for his Reanimator deck: Careful Study that enabled him to discard Iona, Shield of Emeria. Alex used Ancient Tomb to cast a first-turn Chalice of the Void for one, then cast a second-turn Ghostly Prison. Luis used Echoing Truth to put his opponent’s Chalice back into his hand, then Mystical Tutored for Reanimate. That allowed him to plop his Iona onto the battlefield.
Alex cast a Smokestack, one of the key cards in his deck for locking out opponents, but took 7 from the Angel on his opponent’s next attack. He drew for the turn, but quickly scooped up his cards.
"That wasn’t one of my outs…" —Alex Kenny
Luis Scott-Vargas 1, Alex Kenny 0
Alex Kenny started off with a mulligan for the second game, but his opener was quite a doozy: he had a first-turn Tormod’s Crypt and a second-turn Smokestack. The ‘Stack was powered out early by a Mox Diamond and an Ancient Tomb and it put Luis Scott-Vargas in a very tight spot. He needed to come up with a solution and fast after a Brainstorm in response to the artifact failed to yield a counterspell to prevent it from hitting the battlefield.
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The American used Entomb to put an Iona, Shield of Emeria into his graveyard on his upkeep, but stopped playing permanents after that. His plan? Wait out Alex’s Smokestack. Sure enough, Kenny was forced to sacrifice his own Smokestack to itself so he wouldn’t dump his whole board to the card, and Luis began casting spells again. Pithing Needle forced Kenny to sacrifice his Tormod’s Crypt, and Luis opted to set the Needle to Faerie Macabre.
Up next was Entomb, while Alex had Crucible of Worlds and began re-playing lands from his graveyard. The black spell out of the Reanimator deck found a second Iona, and the 7/7 locked Alex out of casting white spells. A second Entomb found Terastodon, and Thoughtseize cleared the way for Luis to cast Reanimate on the 9/9. He opted to blow up three of his own permanents, and Alex knew he was quite dead to the series of plays. He took a look at his next draw, but conceded with a polite "Good game!"
Luis Scott-Vargas 2, Alex Kenny 0